Public utilities provide electric, gas, water or telephone service to customers in a specified area. Utilities have a duty to provide safe and adequate service on reasonable terms to anyone who lives within the service area on without discriminating between customers. Because most utilities operate in near monopolistic conditions, they can be heavily regulated by local, state, and federal authorities. Generally, the local and state agencies are called Public Service Commissions (PSC) or Public Utility Commissions (PUC). Municipal Utilities and Rural Electric Cooperatives may be unregulated though.
Clarksville is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Tennessee, United States, and the fifth largest city in the state. The population was 119,284 in 2008 United States Census. Clarksville is the principal central city of the Clarksville, TN-KY metropolitan statistical area, which consists of Montgomery County, Stewart County, Tennessee, Christian County, Kentucky and Trigg County, Kentucky. The city was incorporated in 1785, and named for General George Rogers Clark, frontier fighter and Revolutionary War hero, brother of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Clarksville is the home of Austin Peay State University, The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper, and neighbor to the Fort Campbell, Kentucky, United States Army post. Fort Campbell is the home of the 101st Airborne Division, and is located approximately 10 miles (16 km) from downtown Clarksville, straddling the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. It is officially Fort Campbell, Kentucky due to the fact the base U.S. Post Office is on the Kentucky side of the base; the majority of Fort Campbell is within the state of Tennessee. The city's nicknames include "The Queen City" or "Queen of the Cumberland" and "Gateway to the New South". The slogan "Tennessee's Top Spot" was introduced as a new city "brand" in April 2008.